Ángela Karime Venegas Hernández, a student at CETIS 78 in Altamira, Tamaulipas, built a device using a 12-volt battery, a frequency generator and a speaker producing 30 pulses per second to extinguish flames without water or chemicals. The sound waves displace oxygen from the fire, snuffing it out within five to eight seconds. After more than 100 tests on materials including wood, flammable liquids, cooking grease and electronics, she named the invention 'Vortex Tech' and will represent Mexico at an international science fair.
upsocl.com
· 2026-09-11
A new analysis finds Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet collected roughly $28 billion in federal contracts between 2018 and 2022, with the five largest tech contracts from 2019-2022 carrying combined ceilings of at least $53 billion. Separately, venture capital poured nearly $100 billion into defense tech startups from 2021 to 2023, a 40 percent jump over the prior seven years combined.
costsofwar.watson.brown.edu
· 2026-09-10
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu issued a formal cease-and-desist letter demanding Meta stop permitting paid ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery. The order follows WIRED reporting that over 350 such ads, identified by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, turned images of real minors into sexualized video clips and reached roughly 29,000 accounts across the EU, US, Australia and India. Many ads promoted apps capable of generating nonconsensual intimate imagery, and dozens more appeared even after WIRED's initial exposure in August.
wired.com
· 2026-09-09
Google announced plans to invest $15 billion in AI infrastructure in Finland, expanding its data center footprint in the country. The move adds to a wave of similar large-scale investments by U.S. tech companies aiming to grow AI computing capacity outside the United States.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-09
Defense startup Covenant announced it has emerged from stealth mode with $250 million raised across three funding rounds, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Lux, 8VC, Aleph and Lightspeed. The company opened a 105,000-square-foot factory in Dallas to build its Anthem long-range cruise missiles, aiming to produce 1,000 units in the first year starting in early 2027 and scaling to 5,000 annually.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-09
A report by the Washington-based Tech Transparency Project found 332 paid ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery ran on Meta's platforms over the past 10 months, with 84 appearing in India. Of those Indian ads, 78 ran after India ordered Meta to remove such content following a BBC investigation. Some ads reused photos of real children, including a European royal, digitally manipulated to create abusive imagery.
bbc.co.uk
· 2026-09-08
A Tech Transparency Project investigation found Meta took days to pull hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads promoting AI apps that generated child sexual abuse material, some using real photos of children including a European royal and a preteen social media influencer. The ads, mostly linked to Chinese-made AI and 'nudify' apps, digitally altered images of children into sexually explicit videos and used explicit captions to lure users.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-08
At VivaTech's 10th anniversary event in Paris, industry observers reviewed a decade of beauty technology evolution, from early virtual try-on tools to today's emerging AI agents. The retrospective highlighted how innovation cycles in beauty tech have accelerated and diversified over the past ten years.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-08
Researchers at the Tech Transparency Project found more than 250 additional ads containing child sexual abuse material on Meta's platforms since early August, despite the company's claims that new AI detection tools would catch such content. Some of the ads used manipulated real photographs, including one that transformed an official image of a minor from a European royal family into a sexually explicit video.
wired.com
· 2026-09-08
Australia's government unveiled a proposed 'My Feed, My Way' law that would require social media platforms to let users over 16 choose between an algorithm-driven feed or one showing only content from people they follow. Platforms would need to notify users to select a default option, and non-compliance could bring fines up to AU$109.2 million (about $79 million). The bill, headed to Parliament this year, also targets addictive design features in AI chatbots and games aimed at minors.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-08
Vibe coding, the practice of using AI language models to write software with minimal manual coding, is drawing scrutiny after Georgia Tech researchers linked dozens of security vulnerabilities directly to AI-generated code in just a three-month sample. Despite these risks, a survey of over 1,100 professional programmers found that 72 percent use AI coding tools daily, with AI-generated or -assisted code making up 42 percent of their codebases and expected to exceed half by next year.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-06
A commentary revisits a 2010 Harvard study showing people are happier focusing on the present, even boring tasks, than letting their minds wander. The author argues this problem has intensified in tech culture, where excessive optionality, social comparison, and startup hype make it hard for ambitious people to commit fully to their current path.
hvpandya.com
· 2026-09-05
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